If you hold a federal contract, you carry a veteran hiring rule that most companies do not. It comes from VEVRAA. The Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs, or OFCCP, enforces it. The core of that rule is a number: the annual veteran hiring benchmark.

The benchmark is not a quota. It is a yardstick. You set it once a year. Then you measure your actual veteran hires against it. If you fall short, you do not get fined for the gap. But you do have to show what you did about it. That is where most contractors get tripped up.

This guide is about the measurement side. What the benchmark is. How you set it. What data you must track all year. And how long you keep it. Get this right and an OFCCP audit is a paperwork exercise. Get it wrong and it becomes a problem.

What is the OFCCP veteran hiring benchmark?

The Vietnam Era Veterans' Readjustment Assistance Act is a federal law. Most people call it VEVRAA. It sits at 38 U.S.C. § 4212. It tells federal contractors to take active steps to hire and promote protected veterans.

To make that real, OFCCP added a benchmark. Each year, a covered contractor sets a hiring benchmark for protected veterans. The benchmark is a percentage. It answers one question: what share of your new hires should be protected veterans?

Then you track your real numbers. You compare the share of veterans you actually hired to the benchmark you set. The benchmark gives the comparison a fixed line. The rule lives at 41 CFR § 60-300.45.

One thing to be clear on. The benchmark is not a hiring target you must hit. The regulation says quotas are forbidden. You will not be penalized for missing the number. You can be penalized for not tracking it, not setting it, or not acting on a shortfall.

Are you even covered by VEVRAA?

Not every business has to track this. The rule turns on your federal contract and your size. OFCCP raised these dollar limits on October 1, 2025. So the older figures you may have read are out of date.

Here is the current line. If you hold a single federal contract or subcontract of $200,000 or more, basic VEVRAA duties apply. If you also have 50 or more employees, you must build a written veteran affirmative action program too. Both thresholds moved from $150,000 up to $200,000 in 2025.

One more point worth knowing for 2026. A lot of contractor affirmative action went away in 2025. The old race and gender rules under Executive Order 11246 were rescinded. VEVRAA was not. It is a law passed by Congress, not an executive order. So the veteran benchmark and the veteran tracking duties are still in full force. If your compliance team thinks the whole program ended, they are wrong on the veteran side.

What is the current veteran hiring benchmark percentage?

OFCCP publishes a national benchmark every year. It equals the share of veterans in the U.S. civilian labor force. As of July 30, 2025, that figure is 5.1%. It dropped from 5.2%, which ran from March 31, 2024 through July 29, 2025.

The number drifts down most years as the veteran share of the workforce shrinks. So do not hardcode 5.1% into a policy and forget it. Pull the live figure from the OFCCP benchmark page each year and update your program.

National method or five-factor method: which do you use?

You get to pick how you set your benchmark. There are two ways. Most contractors use the first. The second gives you more control but costs more work.

The national percentage method

This is the simple path. You adopt the national figure OFCCP publishes. Right now that is 5.1%. You do nothing to calculate it. You just record that you chose the national benchmark and note the percentage and date. Done.

For most midsize contractors, this is the right call. It is clean, it is defensible, and an auditor cannot argue with the government's own number.

The five-factor method

The second path lets you build a benchmark that fits your region and your hiring reality. You weigh five factors and document each one. The five factors come straight from the regulation:

1. State veteran share: the average percent of veterans in the labor force in the states where you operate, using a three-year Bureau of Labor Statistics average.
2. Job service veterans: the number of veterans who came through the state employment service delivery system over the last four quarters.
3. Your applicant and hire ratios: the share of veterans among your applicants and your hires in the prior year.
4. Outreach effectiveness: an honest read on whether your veteran recruiting and outreach actually worked.
5. Other availability factors: anything else that affects supply, like the nature of the job or your location.

If you use this method, you must document each factor and explain how much weight you gave it. That paper trail is the point. Skip the documentation and the benchmark is worthless in an audit.

What data must federal contractors collect and track?

The benchmark is only as good as the data behind it. 41 CFR § 60-300.44 spells out what you record. You collect this every year and keep a running count. Then you compute your veteran hire rate and line it up against the benchmark.

Here is the data set you must keep:

Two of those numbers do the heavy lifting. Protected veteran hires divided by total hires gives your veteran hire rate. That rate is what you compare to the benchmark. The rest of the data backs up the story and shows your effort.

You also have to compare those figures to the benchmark and document the comparison. It is not enough to hold the raw numbers. The regulation wants the analysis on paper too.

How do you collect veteran self-identification?

You cannot count veteran applicants if you never ask. So VEVRAA requires you to invite applicants to self-identify as protected veterans. You do this at two points. Once before the job offer, when they apply. Once after the offer, before they start work.

The invitation has to be voluntary. An applicant can decline. You record the response either way, including a declined response. You keep that data, but you keep it separate from the rest of the application so it does not bias the hiring decision.

This is where good sourcing pays off twice. The more veteran applicants enter your pipeline, the more your self-identify data fills in. And the more your real veteran hire rate climbs toward the benchmark on its own. Strong veteran sourcing is the cheapest compliance tool you have. It is also how you find people who lead well, which is the whole reason the rule exists. We dug into that in why veterans make great employees.

How long must you keep the records?

Three years. That is the rule. You document every activity you take to meet your VEVRAA duties, and you retain those documents for three years. That covers your benchmark choice, your data, your comparison, and your outreach.

The three-year rule applies to every contractor for the benchmark records and the annual applicant and hire data. There is no size exception that reduces that period. Where smaller contractors get relief is on general personnel records, things like applications, interview notes, and termination files, where the minimum drops to one year if you have fewer than 150 employees or a contract under $150,000. But three years is the right number for the benchmark, the data, and your comparison analysis. Most midsize contractors should just plan for three across the board and not split hairs.

An OFCCP review is a desk audit first. They ask for your records. If your benchmark, your data, and your three years of files are clean and matched up, the review moves fast. If they are missing or do not reconcile, that is when the back-and-forth and the findings start.

What happens if you miss the benchmark?

Missing the benchmark is not a violation. Read that again, because it is the most misunderstood part of the rule. The benchmark is a measure of progress, not a pass-fail line.

What OFCCP wants to see is the response. If your veteran hire rate sits below the benchmark, you look at why. Maybe your outreach is weak. Maybe your job postings do not reach veterans. Maybe your applicant pool has few veterans in it. You document the gap, name the likely cause, and put a real plan in place to do better.

The contractors who get findings are not the ones who missed the number. They are the ones who missed it, did nothing, and kept no record of the analysis. The fix is almost always at the top of the funnel. You need more qualified veterans applying. That is a sourcing problem, and it is solvable.

How does this fit your broader hiring strategy?

The benchmark is a floor for measurement, not a ceiling for ambition. Treat it as a prompt to build a real veteran pipeline, not a box to check once a year.

Veterans bring skills midsize firms need. Logistics, security, IT, project management, and cleared work are full of people who ran operations under pressure. The benchmark just nudges you to go find them. We covered where that hiring is happening in where veterans are getting hired in 2026, and the firms doing it best in the top companies hiring veterans.

Two more pieces help here. If you want a low-risk way to test veteran talent before you hire, look at becoming a SkillBridge host company. And if you want to understand the status side of what your applicants are claiming, our breakdown of veterans preference points explains how protected veteran status is defined.

Where to find veteran talent to meet the benchmark

Tracking the benchmark is the easy half. Hitting it means getting more qualified veterans into your pipeline. That is the part a spreadsheet cannot solve for you.

Best Military Resume builds that pipeline. More than 1,000 new veteran profiles join the platform every month. Over 60,000 resumes have been built on it. These are transitioning service members and veterans actively looking for civilian roles, with their experience already translated into civilian terms.

For a federal contractor, that solves both problems at once. You get a steady flow of veteran applicants, which lifts your real hire rate toward the benchmark. And you get the documented outreach an OFCCP auditor wants to see. The pool runs deep in the fields contractors hire hardest for, like cleared work, logistics, security, and IT.

If you want a reliable source of veteran candidates to support your VEVRAA program, partner with us to source veteran talent. We will connect you to the pool and show you how it fits your hiring goals.